The Road to Manga - Creating a Concept for a Short Story 101

1. About this course: Have you ever wished to draw your own Munger? But have difficulty when it comes to planning your own project? Or are you an illustrative who wants to go into sequential art? Then this course is for you. My name is Olga regards give from studio yoga. I have published Munger professionally, and I have been in love with Munger for many, many years. In this part of my course, Siri's I will be teaching you how to turn among idea in Don't execute herbal concept for a short story. One of the first things I learned when I start drawing Munger was importance off being able to portray a story on the limited amount of pages, whether four contest or for a publisher, This is a skill that is absolutely essential. Now. I would like to share my knowledge with you. Let's get this amazing idea that are still stuck in your head onto paper. So let's begin 2. Introduction: do you have the dream off grading, among other touches, the heart of readers. But when it sit down and try to think of a concept, you are probably thinking about one off those super long stories like narrow toe bleach, Dragon balance on ensured an E pose. You might start to ride the story down, but the task is so daunting, and it is so difficult to keep track off all the characters and storylines that the project ends up being abandoned. If this happened to you, you're not alone. This is one of the most common mistakes beginners make, and almost everybody has made it. That is giving yourself a challenge that is just too big. You should realize that most often they're not. People who created such long stories did not start out with them Before attempting to create a project with 2050 or more volumes, they worked on shorter stories one shorts off under 50 pages or one volume stories. You have to learn to pace yourself before you attempt something big. You have to know how many pages you will need for certain scenes. Get a feeling about your pace, even experiment with your style. And for that short stories are perfect. Don't try to emulate. Oppose length Munger. I mean, I get it. It has a ton off. Also characters, awesome storylines and character development, but without assistance. And without a big publisher being your fortune to draw it, you are sitting yourself up for disaster. Don't start with anything that will take more than a year to accomplish when you're a beginner, usually the Munger that you see but popular America is not. Their debut. Work starts more in gain experience. Chances are you will not complete your first project. Your skills might improve so much that by page 10 or 20 the quality off your first pages might give you a scare. Or you might lose interest, which is why doing short stories in the beginning is so important. You have to get the experience off finishing something. Also, you need to get experience off telling a story at a small scale before proceeding to something bigger. You know, you can tell a story on 5 to 8 pages or 16 or 20 actually, one off the reasons people tend to start with an EP assess Project ISS, because they never learned how to tell a story in a small scale and end up literally drawing themselves into a corner and abandoning their monstrosity off story because they lost the threat or grew fed up with it. Doing a short story will teach you what is essential to your story and what can be left out or what can be compressed. Keep it simple, keep it short and build. Abuse kills with every project, it will be more awesome. More than once, I heard from editors that most Munger projects made by gifted beginners do not make it past Page 20. In that case, those are beginners who were actually lock enough to lend a paid gig with a publisher, and they still failed, since they elect experience the reality off actually having to create a Munger for the publisher paired up with the pressure off that lines and High Expectations letter on our block. Their stories were dropped, the contracts cancelled that they only known how to approach the project and had the experience off. Having finished short stories. Well, you do not have to suffer the same fate in this course. I want to teach you how to create a short story for a manga. When I started out a credit, a number of short stories that they would back the editors was in order to get their opinions. And I also created short stories for contest, which helped me lend a publishing gig. Later on for this course, I thought of the challenge of creating a concept for our 20 page Munger. You could called it the major number or to court and editor, the cursed 20 because so many projects did not get over that number of pages. That means the project was dropped before that. And since this is the trash hold, if you add the cover, your it paged when you want it, do pest it. If you're able to create a 20 page story, you will be able to create 180 page story and more because essentially the process off, creating a bigger project. Similar 3. A few things to consider: Don't be a perfectionist. Chances are you expecting too much from yourself, waiting for a miracle to happen, being perfectionistic, wanting to lend and bestseller, wanting to be the best to draw, the bestest to create something similar to one of your favorite series. Maybe you're trying to learn everything there is to Manga before trying to jump into the water of publishing. If you continue with that course, it may well be that you will be spending the next ten years learning. All there is to Manga. It's still not feel that you are ready. I know people like that. I have friends like that. I have friends who have had the skills to make it in the manga word 18 years ago, but did not do anything with them because they just couldn't get over that perfectionism. You don't need it. I get the wish of wanting to create better drawings. I really do. But by aiming for perfection, you are deliberately holding yourself back, putting chains on your hands and feet and wondering why you don't progress as fast as you want. So stop pressuring yourself into being perfect. You don't need to have learned every skill there is before starting to draw manga, learned while you're doing it. Why? Because actually drawing a manga will show you where your strengths and weaknesses lie. Things simple, be efficient, efficiency and simplicity. We'll build the bridge that will spend over their base of art blocks, frustration and burnout. Learn the things that actually matter to the story you want to do. You don't need to be able to draw spaceships or maker when you want to draw a medieval story. And you don't need to be able to draw armor when you're doing a slice of life story around modern time life. Do you know how much time it took between the time I took up drawing seriously and between my first submission to a publisher, six months, why? Because I started drawing manga right away. And by doing that, I quickly, so what has struggled with the most that helped me to streamline my learning process. When you know what skills your leg, you can tackle the issues head-on. Sure. I did not get a publishing contract right away. It took me another four years till I got my first contract with the publisher. But I can tell you from experience that going about it in that way made my learning curve in incredibly steep and made me progress extremely fast. Plus, it saved me a couple of years of needless frustration. So stop setting yourself up for failure. Start setting yourself up for success. 4. Business Secrets: I will let you in on a couple of secrets that for whatever reason nobody talks about. One, you don't need perfection for manga. Instead, you need speed and consistency. Let me elaborate. Even when you work for publisher, they don't expect you to draw it perfectly, but they expect you to draw fast enough to keep up with deadlines and to keep the overall quality of your drawings the same. If the quality goes up as it sometimes does with enough time and experience, good. But if you intend to spend 40 plus hours on one manga page, then you might be better cut out for illustration too. You don't need to be a little monster boosts your backgrounds unless it's your passion. I mean, I get it. I love creating intricate and detailed backgrounds and almost ruined my health during my first longer project. So if it's not your thing, don't feel pressure to do it. I will tell you about two things that according to my editor, with us really care about. First is the character's faces, like facial expressions, mood, hair. And second, the story and dialogue. Unless your reader is a beggar and fetishized, they will spend less than fraction of a second on the background. And I'm not saying that having a beautiful background is a bad thing. It can certainly add to the mood and raise the quality of your manga. But should the level of detail in your background be a hurdle that is standing between you and the publication of your manga than screw detail backgrounds. You think that the beautiful backgrounds they often seeing in manga were drawn by a manga, cut themselves. More often than not, they were drawn by assistance or transferred from photos by assistance or copy pasted in from special books, lag, scenery collections, or are even our screen tone. Also more and more 3D is used thanks to software like clips, ketchup, or blender. Why? Because backgrounds take time and timess chart when drawing a manga three references. Some people have this notion that using references is somehow cheating. And it's not, at least when you don't confuse it with coping and there is a difference. Copying is taking somebody else's artwork and recreating it line for line that is not referencing, even though people sometimes use that term in this context, references taking image material and based on that, developing your own content, by taking parts of the references and changing it to fit your projects. You can take a pause, but draw it from a different angle. You can take the texture of a stone and applied your own drawings of the ground and so on. You still create your own composition, you still create your own art. And that's not cheating. That's working smart. As mentioned before, it is quite common to use photos for backgrounds. Oftentimes, manga car will send out their assistance to shoot photos of a certain scenario from different perspectives. And this will be then transferred with ink by using a light table into the background. There are a lot of reference books that are, may differ exactly that purpose, not only for background, but also for characters and poses. For mannequins, forget wooden mannequins. The artist of today uses body, cone, body Chan, Figma, archetype. And if you want to spend a bit more money, but to have more dependability and formability. Fees and fees are basically formable squishy dolls that are more anatomically correct than body cone and Figma archetype and can do more realistic poses, for instance, with fees and you can really cross the arms. Also, there's an app that you can use like easy Pauser. It's all perfectly legit Clip Studio Paint also has 3D models that you can use as does blender. It's all perfectly legit. I repeat, using these mannequins as reference is not cheating. In fact, the posing them at drawing them, you are teaching your brain to think as 3D five materials. You do not need the non plus ultra materials in order to be able to draw manga. There are some goodbye, moderately cheap art supplies that you can use. Plus there is free software out there. So if you are on a budget or are starting out, you can try the following things. First, sakura, micron fine liner to delegate our starter kit, three, Medici Bank software. I would recommend though, getting good quality paper. It doesn't have to be expensive. Try high-quality printing paper. I for one, use color copy six, muscle memory, the secret to drawing faster, It's developing a Muslim memory. Having a muscle memory is like, well, if your hand is alive, as if it just draws what you want to draw. I know it sounds spooky and awesome. You can develop muscle memory by drawing a lot for a prolonged period of time. The more you do it, the easier it gets for me. After about two months of drawing more than 4 h a day, my hand gets to the point where just draws without me having to consciously think about where the line should go. Seven and unsteady hand, do we have an unsteady hand? There is a trick that I accidentally developed when I was commuting between my home and art school all those years ago, I started drawing a board of moving vehicles, electric, trains, buses, and it's improved the steadiness of my hint a lot, but a word of caution, you shouldn't draw when you're the one behind the wheel. 5. The Topic: Decide what the story is about. You can create a short story about anything. Just be aware of the limitations. And these are one, since the page count is limited, you do not have much space for character development. And to do to the same limitations you store, it can deal only with one big problem. So let's say you want to do 20 pages. That is the maximum that I would recommend for your first short story. In this case, you have about five pages to introduce your character, the location of the story, and the problem. Then you have ten pages to escalate the problem in five pages to solve the problem, finish the story. And the problem can be anything. It can be confessing to a crash. It can be overcoming fear, or it can be something totally absurd, like my favorites thought experiment, imagine a demon or monster kidnapping the wrong person. The reason can be anything, maybe the god drunk or maybe they lost playing cards with hello demon friends. I like that one since it can have so many interpretations and spending genre from comedy to mystery, to shone into showed you two horror to even Boyle's law for God's love, depending on the character and the mood you're going for. The premise can be developed in all kinds of storylines. Short stories in particular, with one main topic or conflict. Here are some possible topics. One, achieving dreams. Your character wants to be among, aka, what's holding them back, or they want to confess to their crush. What happens? Or a crush confessors to them. What happens? They want to go to Japan or any other country, but have no money. What will they do? They want to get to a certain school or university or certain company Y, what will they do to facing nightmares? They biggest fear is x. And after they moved to a new house, they discovered that it's there like spiders, ghosts, monsters, or they have a certain phobia and they have to overcome it in order to save our left. 13, what if, what if they discovered that they had the special power? What would it be and what will they do with it? Or what if they won the lottery or whatever? There is some meteor coming or what an earthquake hit, how will they react to the chaos around them or whatever they should afford to offer ghost at an abandoned castle. 6. Getting your ideas organized: Getting your ideas organized, there are a couple of questions that can help you organize the story. Who is doing, what, where, when, why, and to what end? One who. This is a short story. Remember? So characters don't have much space for character development, but still you have to ask the same questions about them that you would do for longer story. You have to have at least a clear picture of who they are. What are their physical traits? Like size, bodybuilder, posture, color of the eyes, hair, skin, what happened? Color of closest to the lag to bear, make a color chart for the characters which will come in handy when doing illustrations. What are their emotional traits? What are their strengths and weaknesses? Do they have phobias? How do they deal with happy and sad events? How will they react to unexpected events? What do they like? What do they hate? They have certain motivations, beliefs, goals. Did they have a dream that they gave up? And why? What do these motivations and goals have to do with the story? What are their sociological traits? Did they grow up in a big city in the countryside? Who are their parents and friends? What do they believe in and how did the rate the characters, if at all? Where did they go to the kindergarten school, university, if they are studying and working? And what field to what, What do your characters doing your story? Make a summary of the events. Three, where, where does the story take place? Which town or village, which country, which continent? Or is it earth and all? Maybe it's an alternate universe for when, what season is the storage taking place? What year, what century? If it is taking place in the past? We can use historical data to backup your story and make it more authentic. The time also has implications regarding the level of technology, the closing morals and behaviors. Five, why? Why are the events in your story taking place? Is it something that you characters have initiated or is it something outside of their control? If they initiated it? What are their motivations? If not, what happened to cause the problem in your storage to occur? Six, what end? What is the outcome of your story? Ideally, the events of the story have changed something in order for the characters. 7. Execution: If you have 20 pages to work with, then you can divide the pages as follows. Intro, have five pages to introduce your character, the location of the story in the problem. Mid point. After that, you have ten pages to escalate the problem. Conclusion, five pages to solve the problem. I've finished the story. So let's get into detail. Intro. Your reader needs to know when and where the story takes place, who your character is, what their motivation is, and what the issue of the story is. You can show where the star is taking place by depicting the location in the first panel, you can build in the information about the time by including a textbox or by showing it through the use of green tones, or by adding an additional panel that provides more information when they are cherry blossoms spring, then you introduce the character, how you do it. It's up to you. You can show a situation or you can use internal monologue or a mix. What's seen introduces your story. You can use a dramatic start by showing you a character being in trouble. If you do not want to use an introduction of the character by him or herself, you can use the way, see them in order to give a first impression to the reader. You can introduce the character by having somebody talk about them. It can be somebody who looks up to them, or it can be somebody who hate them in this gossiping about them. That way you can build in a lot of background information that would take dozens of pages or even chapters to depict. After you have introduced the character to your audience, it is time to introduce the problem. If you haven't already, what does your story about? Are they facing a challenge or are they creating a situation themselves? But page five-year reader should know the basic facts about what the story's about, who your character is, when and where the store is taking place, and what challenges they are facing. You can use visual cues to convey information, e.g. instead of having to spend pages on an event, you can show a newspapers with an article about it in one panel seven, you lots of space that you can use on resolving the problem. Here are some of the first pages of short stories that I did in the past. For instance, in this short story, a demon girl wants to be an angel and tries her best to achieve her goal, even though her family certainly doesn't like it. In this short story that I did for a contest, a boy gets chased by bullies. This is a short story that I did for the publisher for a short story project. In this story, a girl gets backed every day on the school bus by a boy. This is another story that I did for a contest. It's a story about a girl who finds a magic lamp eta bizarre. And then this story, as you can see, the stories based in a different world midpoint, the midpoint, the meat of the story. This is where the tension is rising until it reaches its peak. In a 20-page story, I would suggest to serve at least ten pages for it. It may be that the problem that the character is facing becomes dire and the character has to resolve it somehow. Ideally is the solution should present itself at the end of those ten pages conclusion in a 20-page story leaf, at least five pages for the conclusion at the beginning of the conclusion that the tension is highest in it goes down until the end where the situation is resolved. Leaf at least one page for the end. When rafting pages would suggest to first start with the end than the beginning, and then do the midpoint. Very often people run out of pages when the first to the beginning and then the mid point, they often run out at the end. Especially when you work for publishers and have a limited amount of pages, cannot afford to run out of pages. So doing the end first ensures that the ending is not cramped during the beginning next ensures that the readers are introduced to the characters properly and they know who your characters are. And since you already have done the ending, you know where the story's going. So you can use foreshadowing in the beginning. Sure, you should know where the story's going, since you really should have a script finished before you start any drafting. But it happen super often that people just start without a plan and then store it tends to go off. The original idea. 8. The Script: It is really important to have the script before you start drafting pages, have it as detailed as you need. I would suggest to write it down page by page, panel by panel. Describe what you want to include in the panels, which perspective you want to use, what is being said and maybe even write down what impressions and feelings you want to invoke with the content of the panels that will help you when you start doing your pages, you will find some templates and the attachment that you can use. 9. Basic Page Layout: Format. In Japan, manga is generally drawn on before format that depending on where you want to publish or whether you want to self-publish, the measures can be different. So if you want to work for a certain publisher, you have to find out what format they use. Information like that. It's usually found on their website in the submission section, or it can be requested by email. For instance, the publisher that they worked for use different formats and spacing. Similarly, printing companies may be using different formats. It is generally cheaper to print in a widely used format instead of a special format. So when you self publish, you might want to keep the costs low and use one of the generic formats. Usually can find information regarding accepted formats on the printing company websites, including templates, whatever format you use, that terms that apply to all of them, the spacing may change, but please keep these terms in mind. Canvas. Canvas refers to the piece of paper or the file that you are drawing on. Thing is, when a manga pages created, it is actually bigger than the printed version. Not only the original, actually bigger by a factor of about 1.5 or twice as big as the printed version, but it is bigger in terms of drawings, especially with manga pages. Were drawings go beyond the edge of the manga. The drawings extend beyond the page and for good reason it is to avoid errors at the printers, such as cutting off the pages. I will talk more about that in trim line and bleed. The next term is safe area or live area. The term safe area or live area refers to the center of the page. All important text and drawing should remain inside the leaf area so that it is not cut off or disappears inside the binding margin area. The margin is the area between the safe area in the trim line. Generally, this area remains free of drawings or texts unless you deliberately want to extend your panel beyond that for effect, or to give a panel more importance or to create a spread where the drawings fill the page beyond the printed area. Remember, you should definitely avoid placing any text inside the margin area. Trim line. Trim line refers to the edge of the page. It is the part where the page is cut off at the printers, everything outside will be cutoff. Bleed. Bleed is an additional area outside the trim line, is that the splint in when creating a file for printing, especially withdrawing that go beyond the trim line, you have to draw them at least 3 mm of the page that is in the scaled down version for printing, or at least 6 mm when your original is twice as big as the printed version. Why? Because the cutting machine might make a mistake and cut unevenly. So if you do not draw beyond the trim line into the bleed, it will result in the white borders. If you draw into the bleed, even if there is a slight mistake and cutting, it will not be as obvious. Personally. I generally draw a centimeter or so into the bleed so that I have more to work with Even page and odd page. If you want to work for sudden publisher, it is important to be familiar with a printing system. For instance, some publishers begin the first manga page that there's not including the covers and illustrations on an odd page, while others begin it on uneven page with a double-page spread. Things like that are important to know when you're planning spreads. It is important to imagine how the pages will look when printed, when the readers will have to turn the page so that you can arrange the reading law accordingly, which is why I generally work with spreads instead of single pages. Spread or double-page. Spread refers to a double-page in manga, they are usually drawn together when you have a panel that spreads over two pages, but you can also use it when designing normal pages. Personally, I often use a three as a canvas and draw my pages as double pages, which gives me a full control of the paneling. 10. Types of Panels: What are the different types of panel design? Depending on what story you want to tell and the tone you want to tell it in. You can use a different panel design. And while there's aesthetically a difference between showed you and Sean and panel design. It is mainly in the spacing between the pages. Are there rules remain applicable also, it is not obvious at first glance. So what are the different types of panels? Horizontal. Horizontal panels are perfect for wide shots. Shots that involve a lot of horizontal background or a lot of texts as well as close-ups. They are more static and relax that other panels. Vertical. Vertical panels are more dynamic and more fit for showing a scene with a lot of height, like a building, a tall person, or when there's a lot of sky, dynamic, dynamic panels break the panel mode, insights and direction. They are usually used for action scenes like fighting. Spreads. Spreads are panels that stretch to a whole page or even a double-page, and are reserved for scenes with a lot of impact and importance. 11. How to Panel: When you're just starting out, is there are a lot of things about paneling that you have never heard of. I will provide you with a simple overview. Spacing. While there are differences between the types of spacing and manga, it is best for you to decide on your own instinct to it. Generally, the horizontal space between panels is bigger than the vertical space, but they exact pacing in terms of millimeters may vary. Position in Japanese reading direction. The first panel on the right side, it's red first, but you can emphasize that by expanding the panel upwards into the margin, thus placing the top panel of its higher than the next panels that forces the reader to read it first, even if the reader does not know what reading direction your stories in. By doing that, you can force them to recognize the Japanese reading direction by breaking the mold and placing the panels wider apart. You can also symbolize the passage of time or change of the location or situation. Optimal number of panels. The more penalty use, the more cluttered your page becomes. On average, the most relaxed reading experience is achieved by using five panels or less. We can use more, of course, by arranging small panels and panel blocks. But if you got more than ten panels, it can be quite difficult for the reader to figure out how you pages read. 12. Reading Flow: Some of the least known techniques in the most frequent error for beginner manga artists is the reading floor. So what does the reading flow mean? Exactly what it says. It is the way how your readers are reading your manga, the path there I stake, as they wander through the page, you can make the journey difficult for them or you can make it easier. The easier you make it for your readers to get through the page. The less annoyed and confused while the readers be, the readers can get quite unnerved when every page is like a riddle of trying to figure out which panel is read in what order optimally, your reader shouldn't even have to think about that. So how do you influence the reading floor by paneling, by placing of speech bubbles, by the direction of the movement, by visual cues, and by understanding what is important to your reader. So let's talk about it step-by-step. The paneling optimally, your pages should not have more than five panels unless you order them and panel blocks, the more panels that are, the longer that pass your reader has to walk in order to get through the page with lots of twists and turns like a mountain road with the optimal flaw is when the eye makes an S route through the page, provided it is the Japanese reading direction. When it is the Western reading direction, it is an inverted S. So keep in mind, the less you chase your readers through the page, the less tiring the whole experience is for the reader of your manga. Speech bubbles, characters talk a lot and they think a lot. And every time there is a speech bubble or thought bubble or exposition by the aerator, the AI makes a detour in order to read it, you can either put the speech bubble in the way of the reading floor supporting it, or you can lead your reader astray by sending them on a goose chase. One of the most common mistakes beginners make is not to plan in the speech bubbles, to do the drawings of the page first, and then deciding where to place the dialogue later, unless you have planned the bubbles accordingly and drawn the drawings to suit it. Most often than not, speech bubbles end up at the age of the panel because you do not want your beautiful drawings to be cold, but text and often the bubbles are too small for the text ending up looking cramped in crowded. My tip is to plan the texts and bubbles in from the beginning. At the same time you do your panel placement or even before that, decide what you want to tell on that page and set up the reading flow by using your speech bubbles and panels. Direction of movement. The direction of movement can be used to support the reading floor. For instance, japanese reading direction. You read from right to left. So you can support that by arranging the movement in the panel to move from right to left. Or if it is a panel on the far left side of the page. In the next panel begins on the far right side of the page. You can place the movement of the last panel counter to the reading direction, thus guarding the movement in the direction of the next panel. Same thing on the last panel of the left page. In order to get to the next panel, you have to turn the page so you can make the movement of the last panel go in the direction of the page. On the next page. Visual cues, visual cues refer to the drawing in the panel itself, the cashew butter, the artist behind desk, not bitumen. And many other amazing theorists uses them a lot. He would use the law of the drawings in the panel to guide the eye from one speech bubble to the next. Like the form in the direction of the fence or the movement direction of the character keyword in the eye at the next panel, like a well aimed arrow. What is important to the reader? Let's imagine the following situation. You are sitting on a train having just purchased a long anticipated the volume of a story that you love, you know that you have to get off the train and 20 min and you really want to know what happens. What will we concentrate on? Generally, the readers concentrate on the text interfaces with our spent most of the time looking at the faces of the characters as they support or show the emotion behind the text, less time spent on the body, unless there's some FUN service involved and even less time spent on the backgrounds. And average reader spends a fraction of a second on a background. And I'm not saying that these are not important, they are. But in the big picture of a story, most readers will use them as orientation, but not even remember them unless they have a background fetish like I do, they will notice, however, if the backgrounds are notoriously missing or badly executed. So use this knowledge to guide the reader through the page by making use of the placement of the phases in the direction of glands as you are guiding your reader subconsciously through the page without them ever knowing it. What they will know, however, is how comfortable of our reading experience your story is. They don't ever need to know that you have manipulated them. So this will be our secret. 13. Panel Content: I want you to think about something. What is the most important thing in your story? What scene has the most impact, the most war effect? Have you found it? Then give it the biggest panel or even a spread. Similarly, there's usually a big background panel at the beginning of a story showing the reader where the story is taking place. Questions in thoughts like that are important part of the planning process. And it will help you fill the panels and tell the story the way you want to tell it. This lesson, I will talk to you about basic panel content. Establishing shots. In these shots, you're established your location and provide information. Where does the scene take place? Is it a city or village of forest? What time of year is it? Is a day. Is it night? How's the weather? Is it even worth another planet? And other dimension? Is that the present, past or future, a short leg that can provide a lot of information visually so that you read that can place the story. Also, this type of shot can be combined with position exposition. In the exposition, the situation is explained with birds. It may mentioned the time, place, or informed on the character's identity or the theme of the story. Tried to keep it as short as possible. Wide shot. It goes closer to the characters, shows them and their surrounding shows what is going on, how they interact with the world. Who is the story about the neural get to the character, the more you can show their body language and facial expressions. Action that mimic panels, tilting perspective, drawing, action scenes. Not only is it recommended to use more dramatic perspectives, energy, land pauses and effect flex bit lines, but also dynamic panels, tilt the horizon, open panels and spreads. How to choose a perspective. Low angles are used for dramatic scenes. High angles give you an overview of the surroundings, but they also can be used to create drama. While most panels are at eye level, avoid one-point perspective with the vanishing points smack in the center. Such perspective looks unnatural. Put the vanishing points slightly to the side. Hierarchical proportions and paneling. Important scenes get bigger panels than less important scenes. You can even use spreads over one or a double-page. Let's imagine a scenario, your characters reading a book in the libraries. Suddenly our T-Rex barges into the room, leading to your character dropping the book. Which scene we'll get the biggest panel or possibly even a spread, obviously the T-Rex Bejing in because should the part where they dropped the book get the biggest panel, it would confuse the reader by giving too much attention to the book unless you want to draw attention to the book because it is a book about summoning dinosaurs. Close ups. Avoid using too many close-ups. Close ups mean that the camera goes really close to the character, especially with close-ups, use big panels, use them for the most important scenes and for the most important dialogue. Atmospheric panels. Sometimes panels are used that are not essential to the story, but that provided with an atmosphere like with nature shots. You don't have to draw an insect crumbling of our leaf. But if the source is taking place in spring and summer, it can enhance that feeling of nature and off-season. Another variation is when you are using a wide shot in the middle of the story. Not because you need to show what's going on, but in order to convey a feeling of the scene by dramatically posing your characters and the environment with a carefully chosen perspective and lighting effect. Emulsion panels, affect or emotion panels are used in order to emphasize things that are being said or thought. Instead of just using simple texts, speed lines, and screen tones are hedging can be used in order to convey a sense of urgency or show a feeling. Dialogue panels. They are moments in stories where there's less action, but there's a lot of information that has to be passed on or where emotional bounds are established, depending on how much space you have, you can use small panels or half the characters interact with their environment, giving unspoken hints through their body language. It is important to show reactions to what is being set up and panels. You don't have to confine your characters exclusively two boxes. In certain scenes, you can make the character stick out of the box. For instance, when one panel, simply an open text panel in here for character stick out of the box into the text panel. You can show that the thoughts belong to that character. It can be done for additional in phases or to create a pause. When to spread and when not. Use spreads for important and impactful scenes, but don't use them just to increase the page count. Breaking the mold in order to give your page a more dynamic feeling or enforce the reading direction, you can move the panels up and down, open them, or make them expand, as long as all the texts tastes in the safe zone, everything is peachy. For instance, you can expand the first panel of the page up. It works well with images of the cities where there's a lot of sky. By expanding the panel up, you signifies that this is really the first panel and the reader is automatically drawn to it. Similarly, by making the last panel of the page go out of the page. Particularly on the left page in the Japanese reading direction, or the right page in the Western reading direction. It enforces the reader to flip to the next page. It is good to use in dramatic situations. In romantic situations, you can move the next panel slightly down in order to give it a more dynamic loop, tilting the horizon by a few degrees can strengthen the dynamic even more. 14. Project Management in Manga: Let's be honest, creating among us, not just the board drawing manga pages and anybody who has ever tried it will know that it is easy to get lost in the process, even for short story. Having a clear understanding of each step that you have to take can help dissipate your fears and help you save time and your nerves in the long run. A manga project involves a lot of preparation and it's better to take you time in the beginning than having to scrub months and months worth of work because it's lost its way and you noticed it too late. I know everybody wants to jump directly into the drawing of manga pages, but please be patient. You manga deserves it. So why is project management needed in manga? Because drawing a manga is hard, especially when you are in the middle of the project. The lack of sleep and the exhaustion might lead to wrong decisions. Believe me, I know having done the preparation early can help you stay on track even under the most deadline stress. Just take your time with the painting and later on you can trust the decisions that you made when you were still saying interested. So are you ready to jump with me into the process? Here we go. 15. The Phases: Essay already mentioned creating a manga is not just about drawing. There are other things involved. I like to split the process into the following phases. Here, I will give a short overview and then elaborate on each face later on. While I mentioned this phases in consecutive order, it does not mean that you can't go back to prior phases and edit things. Of course you can do that. Phase one. The planning. This phase deals with things that concern the concept of the project itself. Phase to the writing. This phase deals with the writing side of your project, which lays out the groundwork that will follow later on. Phase three, the design. This phase will provide you with the visuals for your manga and determined the style it gives you a story of faith, so to speak, phase for the manga, this phase is about the actual creation of the manga pages. Phase five, the business package, drawing manga is not enough in order to get people to read it. You have to advertise it. Also, this phase helps you to plan ahead with the production of merchandise. Face six, the publishing, this face deals with the publishing of the manga. So let's look a bit closer at each phase. 16. The Planning: In this phase, you determine the basic information about your projects, the timeline, and the social map. Let's look at the project information. Here are some of the factors that can make or break a project, especially when working with publishers, it is important to know how much time you have for drawing a project, but even without publishes, it is something you have to consider. Let's see the following situation. There's a convention next year. I know, as long as COVID is still rampant, it's unlikely, but let's talk hypothetically. Let's say there's a conventional six months and you want to create and sell your manga at the convention, though, more realistically would be a worn shots. And there are very few people who can go through all the steps of the creational half a year. So you have your start day and your final deadline. But I wouldn't recommend to set your deadline at the convention time, give yourself at least a few weeks of buffer time, or even better, a two-month buffer time, a lot of things can happen, so calculating in additional time is very important. In fact, a lot of publishers and now calculate month of buffer time or weight, but the announcement of a project until it's completely finished, there are just too many things that can go wrong and cause a delay or even a constellation. Next, there's the question of the length. In my opinion, this is one of the most important questions, one of the most common rookie mistakes as being too ambitious going for a project that is just too big and foot take a decade or more to complete. On the first try, I would suggest starting with something smaller, something that you can manage. Think about how many pages, chapters, or volumes your project is going to have for reference, I have seen the one shots for up to 56 pages of volume can have 160-200 pages. As for volumes, There's no limit, but I really wouldn't recommend to go over one volume on the first try from what I have seen, even full-time artist spent at least a year on one volume. But the work without assistance and those people are with experience and finishing projects. So it is really an important question to consider. How much time do you want to invest into this project? And the time is determined by the length of the project and you're drawing speed and of course, other factors like your health or their responsibilities and your goals. Next come the questions of Rhonda and target audience. What niche or you're targeting, and who are you drawing for. Different type of manga require different approaches as to different audiences, it's important to think about. Then comes the question of the publication format. Is the project going to be printed or is it going to be online? It is important to think about because certain types of online publication or difficult to print, a neat adjustment. I'm talking about forms like endless Canvas or colored versions. When you print your manga yourself, you have to consider things like printing costs and colored manga is more expensive to print unless your target both media directly and make sure that the pages can be adapted both for printing for internet. The next question is about the medium of creation. Are you working with traditional media, digital or a mix of both? If you're working with traditional media, you have to make sure that you have a good scanner. And especially when working with green tones, you have to make sure that your scanner can remove more. It's a pattern that some scanners course. When the scanner fails to recognize each dot on the screen tone, it looks like a type of checkered pattern, though nowadays people mostly use digital screen tones so it's less of a problem. Just make sure not to stack dots, green tones on top of each other because this can cause more to a pure digital as well. Next comes the question about the production specifics. Let's say you want to use a certain printing company for your manga. They usually have measurements and format requirements on their websites, which is best to follow so that there are no issues when you want to print your manga. They also provide templates. Different printing companies may have different requirements, So it is important to keep them in mind from the beginning. Or your publisher expects it to deliver your pages with certain measurements and with certain file formats. Same story, work with them from the beginning. It will save your panic sessions later on. If you don't have a publisher yet, but plan to approach publishers, It is good to have a list of the publishers who already have projects in the same niche that you are targeting. Oftentimes publisher refuse a project because they feel that the project is not for them, because it's in the wrong niche. They know the audience and know what their audience will expect from them. And since they are typically risk averse, they go with what they know and what sells for them. If you are intending to publish your manga online, unless you publish on your own website. It is good to do your homework and checkout which websites are round and what requirements they have. Also, take time to read the terms of services. Next comes the question of research. Unless it's something fictional or that you are familiar with, a stirrer usually requires some research. It might involve the research of a geographic location, of history, of culture or of some sort of specific topic. Putting it on the to-do list early on is a good idea. And last but not least, is the question of languages. If you attach to publish your project in more than one language, it is good to keep in mind, especially with web publications that may involve different online platforms. These, or at least the basic points to address at the start of the planning. But there are other things to keep in mind, like the timeline. I'm not talking about the time you need to do your projects. Rather, I'm talking about in what time frame your story is taking place. I would suggest to do the step in tandem with the writing process, which is phase two. But you already can make plans. For instance, this is a system that I used to keep an overview of the scenes, tapping in a certain chapter and attach them to a timeframe. Let's say your story or at least Chapter one takes place around the time of March till July of 2019. The first scene starts in May of 2019. The next scene progresses to the end of May into the beginning of June. Scene three happens at the end of June, beginning of July, while seen for is a flashback that addresses a situation which happened in March. Seen five continuous time-wise birth in three has left off and progresses to the middle of July. The timing here is arbitrary. You can adjust the time from chapter to chapter and do it in years or even times of day. It's just to keep a track of the scenes that happen in each chapter and even volume, I will provide the template as well as the other files as our PowerPoint file that you can adjust to your needs. The next thing to address is a social map. It involves the relationships between the characters. Who is your main character, and what relationships does he or she has with other characters? Will the relationship changes the story? Can friends become enemies and enemies become friends? Will a hero go bad or vice versa? Especially with stories that involve a lot of characters, it is good to help yourself keep track of their relationships, not only of main characters, but also side characters. People are moved by different personal motivations. And that personal motivation of a side character might provide the key to solving an issue that the main character is facing. So think about it. I would suggest to draw your special map while you are writing a story. 17. The Writing: This face in both the writing of character biographies, the writing down of the story summary, then the story outlined in the script. So what's the different between the summaries, the outline and the script. In the summary, you write down a short description of the main events that happened to the story. Be brief and try not to make it longer than one page. Outline, you break the story down into volumes. Of course, if you have volumes than the volumes into chapters, and then the chapters into scenes, write a brief description of the scene may be a short paragraph. It's also a good idea to decide how many pages are seen will have. In this case, the timeline will be useful for this one. And it is a crucial step because changes can be made quite easily without you having to lose a lot of time and having to redraw pages. So take your time for this step. The next step is the script. Use the information of the outline and right page by page and panel by panel description of the things that are going on in the story. This also involves the dialogue. You could combine the step with the paneling lettering and thumbnails steps of phase four. But you don't have to. But as long as you don't have the clean pages drone, you can go back and the justice crypt anytime. Of course you can do it after that as well, but it's just more work. 18. The Design: Let's talk about the design. This phase involves the creation of character sheets, expression sheets, fashion sheets, locations and references. Optional steps are sheets of extra swatches, color charts, storyboards, 3D models, and merge design. So let's start with character sheets. How much work you want to put in and how detailed you want them to be depends on you. Just remember that it will be helpful to plan and to try out things in this phase. Because when you start doing the pages, changing designs will come with additional work and loss of time, at least to a close up of the character in frontal side or three-fourths. It is also a good idea to do expression sheets. How much work you want to invest this up to you. For short story can use a few expressions, but for long story you can make more expressions, are many more showing the face from different angles. Or you can go crazy and just do a sheet pair mood from different angles, like neutral, happy, happy with eyes closed or angry. That for each character. Fashion sheets can also come in handy. That way you can create a helpful guide for yourself that you can consult when doing your story. That helps a lot when your character is going to wear more than one outfit, the same character can give off completely different wipes, were wearing different clauses. So try things out. Like in this case, my character Gabrielle, is varying classic losses and looking very differently compared to him varying stage clothing. Here's another example of PATRIC. See what I mean, even with the same pose, the atmosphere around the characters different depending on the clothes. Here's an example with Marie St. Paul's different clothing. At this stage, you can also try out how you design would look like when drawn black and white and green tones. Like in this example with Leia, who, as you can see in the last set of outfits, really loves cats. I also find size charts useful. It can help you remember how big the characters are in relation to each other and to their surroundings? You can find the template in their attachments. I have used the metric system because it's the one used over here, but you can adapt it to your needs in case we use the imperial system. Next come locations. We can include drawings of the locations from different perspectives in this stage, like this, this gym, locker room. Or you can use reference images that you can consult when drawing your backgrounds. In this case, I edit background images that they created based on photos of big cities and towns. If you store is taking place in the city that you live in or have been too. You can also add photographs. Manga can use photographic reference all the time. They even sent out their assistance to shoot photos of different locations from different perspectives that can then be traced by using a light table. Now, let's talk about the things that are optional, especially for longer storage. It might be a good idea to include the same attention to the swath that is given to expression sheets, particularly in fantasy stories that have weapons or armor. And when there are lots of different assets was involved. Same with color charts. Keeping in mind what color you use for which character can be a huge help when doing a longer story. But even in a short story can help. Especially when you go for color instead of keeping a black and white. Storyboards can also be helpful. Though. I'm not talking about detailed storyboard slack for movies. I'm talking about creating drawings of important scenes. It is particularly helpful with longer stories. Not only does it give you goal posts that your story can go towards, it also have several other benefits. For one, it gives you the opportunity to get the scenes out of the way that you really want to draw that are stuck in your head early on. But at the same time, it will help you later on because you already designed the important scenes. You can use them directly or parts of them. Another thing, our 3D models, it might come as a surprise, but a lot of professional manga artists are using them. I know a number of artists who build 3D models of backgrounds that most frequently appear in their manga by using Blender or sketch up, it is also possible to import blend the backgrounds in such a software like Clip Studio Paint that not only has its own 3D backgrounds, but also come with possible 3D mannequins or other 3D assets. Another optional point is designed for merchandise. It is something to consider. Let's take clamp e.g. they design their characters in a way that it's super easy to make merge from them, take more corner e.g. which featured as a mascot and several of their stories. But you don't have to go that far. It could, for instance, let your character Vera t-shirt with a design that you can also put it on t-shirts and bags and other stuff. Why not benefit from your work? And in multiple ways. 19. The Manga: Finally, we come to the manga faith, the one that involves most of the work and it's also the most important. If you have finished the other steps by this point, it should be relatively easy to do because you already have a plan of how many pages you want to do it, what goes on every page and into every panel, what to say, how the characters and the surroundings look, and so on. You might even already have done some storyboards of the most important scenes and have done some work on the paneling, the speech bubbles and the thumbnails, but if not stopped to do it now, Let's start with page thumbnails, paneling and speech bubbles. So what are thumbnails? Basically, they are small rough drawings of your pages. They don't have to be detailed. In fact, you can just use Stickman. It's about readability and the composition of the page. Don't start filling them with the drawings yet. First, I would recommend you to start with the panels and the speech bubbles when drawing the page something else, the form of the panels and the positions of the speech bubbles will determine how renewable you manga is going to be later on. But the great thing about something else is that they don't require too much work and you can redo them relatively easily, especially since they are really small. After you are satisfied with the names of the pages, you can enlarge them to a format that you want to work on. Usually it's twice as big as a format compared to the final printed version. So if you want to print on a five, you do your page, at least on A4. Though there are manga cow who work even on A3, the important thing is that the proportions remain the same. They are also called aspect ratio. But the bigger the format, the more work goes into it. So be warned, you can burn it. Drawing a full manga on A3, believe me, I know my first long project called triple witching hour that I did for Tokyo pop was done on a three and I was exhausted at the end. I had to go on a break from drawing four months after that in order to recuperate. So at this stage with a clean pencil drawings, you can go out as much as you want with the details. Depending on your inking style, you can create a blueprint to be followed with inking or give yourself basic directions. This is also the phase where it can best at effects and sound words. Next comes the inking. When inking traditionally, there are different ways. We can either ink on the same piece of paper with the pencil drawing or use a blue pencil that you don't have to erase when scanning. Or you can keep the pencil drawing and the inking on different sheets of paper and use a light table to transfer them. This is what I often do because it makes erasing the pencil lines unnecessary. And I also don't have to fear making mistakes with ink and ruining the pencil sketch, like accidentally pouring the ink on the page. In such a case, I can just use our new sheet of paper. But depending on whether you ink traditionally or digitally, it influences the next step. If your ink traditionally on the same paper as your pencil drawing, you have to erase them eventually and don't take this task lightly. After erasing the pencil drawings of our whole chapter, my arm was basically useless for the rest of the day. And since you probably will be doing the lettering and apply the screen tones or the coloration digitally. You will also have to scan the pages. This will likely involve some sort of clean up afterwards. So planet into a schedule. Next comes the screen tones. That can be done traditionally or digitally for those who don't know, screen tones are those dots and patterns that you find in manga that indicate shadows, colors, patterns, textures, or moods. They're even our screen tones that have full backgrounds on them. But nowadays it's rare for people outside of Japan to do them traditionally. Given xij Japan finding chief screen tons is hard. And it was software slide, Clip Studio Paint that come with a ton of built-in screen tones. It is much cheaper to do them digitally. Though. It is possible to do a mango without green tones are coloration if you're inking is good enough. The last part, the lettering, which means adding text to your page, are also done digitally nowadays. And don't underestimate the process. It takes a while. Even for short story, you might spend a whole day adding the text. So don't assume that you will be done with it in an hour, blend in the time. 20. The Business Package: This phase is quite important and most frequently neglected. It is best to at least prepare for it while you're drawing the actual manga. I suggest to take it into your deadline consideration and try not to put it off until the end. Let's take the cover. Why is it important? Because it sells the project. A bet cupboard can mean that the manga is not sold. So you or your publisher end up sitting on unsold copies or web comics. Bed cover can mean less clicks. And depending on the model used for the website, you upload it, it may mean less or no revenue at all. So take your time developing a cover illustration, then come the other illustration. Generally in addition to the cover, there are at least as many chapter cover illustrations. They are chapters. These are usually printed in black and white. Oftentimes, each chapter has a bonus illustration as well, like a chubby. These are also usually printed in black and white. And then there are often additional illustrations that come before the chapters that are printed in color. Most commonly the numbers four to one page illustrations and one double-page. But there can be more of that, can be less. It's just that you have to keep in mind that you will have at least to have as many illustrations at their chapters. And of course, this can also be used for promotional materials. Next come the cutouts got out when an illustration of your character without a background so that it can be used for promotional purposes. They also can be used for merchandise. So let's talk about promotional materials. These include illustrations, short and spice descriptions of your manga or blurbs from other creators. If you work with a publisher, they usually take care of that. The only request but they need from you e.g. illustrations. But if you create and publish the manga yourself, you have to take care of that as well. No matter how good a project is, if people don't know about it and they often find is for others, they won't buy it. So try to get as many eyeballs on your project as you can. Next, if the merchandise concept, that gender bias is a great way to have additional income through your manga project. It can be many things like posters, bookmarks, stickers, stationary, e.g. post-it notes, pens, pencil cases, folders, notebooks. Or it can be things like t-shirts, bags, key chains, and many other things. Of course, this means additional production cost. And you have to know your audience. If you have the opportunity to have a booth at a convention, try selling merchant, see what sells best. Different creators attract a different audience. That bias different things. I suggest not to go overboard at the beginning. Try not to have more than 25 pieces of each merge type in the beginning. See what sells best. And of course, if you work with a publisher, they usually take care of the production, cost and distribution of merchandise as well. On a side note, you should know that in Japan, most money is made not by drawing a manga, but by having it turned into an enemy. Why? Because having an enemy usually means that there would be merchandise created and sold of the project, which is why the manga caudate are wealthy, are those with the animate and merchandise steals. Those without on-demand merchandise deal usually barely earn enough to get by. I have to work a regular job and create mango on this side. 21. The Publishing: Since it depends on which way you choose all the options and the publishing face are optional here. So which one to take? If you just want to create your manga and get paid for it going the publisher route is the way to go. It's not the easiest way though, since publishers are quite picky with who they sign up, it is much more expensive for a publisher to create an original project compared to just buying a license for an already existing projects abroad. They have certain expectations and we'll also want to have a say in the creation process. So if you want to go that route, it is best to have the published on board before the project is completed and optimally from chapter one, it does have benefits to work for a publisher Since they have an extensive network, connections to sellers, connection to the media, and have people for all sorts of tasks from the production to marketing. They also organize events that promote the manga or bring you and your manga to establish the events like conventions and book fairs. They also help to organize signing sessions at bookstores, which are usually paid, e.g. when I had my signing sessions, I was paid €50, which is about $60 per hour for signing my name and my Mongo. They also GET request from bookstores and institutions for drawing workshops and in-person drawing workshops pay really well for a reference, depending on who I did the workshop for, I was offered a pay off €70-250 per hour to do a workshop. Some of my colleagues who published with publishers and more money doing promotional tours, was signing sessions and drawing workshops than they originally did receive from the project itself. And of course, the publisher also takes care of traveling, food and accommodations when you have to go somewhere to promote your manga. In my case, those were usually four to five star hotels when I had to go to book fairs and conventions. When I was in Paris, my French publisher just handed me money to buy food at the hotel on the days they weren't going with me to the restaurant. I don't remember exactly how much it was, but I think it was like €200. Our German publishers generally just took us out to eat in the restaurants. But as I said, it's not easy to get signed up with a publisher. General, it works like that. You work on a contract basis for the publisher as a freelance creator to create the manga. You don't get paid per month. Usually get paid a fixed fee based on delivery. And depending on the contract, that can be 50% upfront when you sign the contract. In the other parts, after you deliver certain batches of your manga, some publishers agreed to pay the full fee upfront, though these instances are really rare and they don't do that was first-time creators. They had too many bad experiences with people disappearing. Some publishers pay when the whole manga is done. And it really depends on your contract and your negotiation skills. And when the project is done, you gig ends unless they are promotional activities. But generally that means that unless you have signed a new contract for a new project, there is no additional money which can make the time in-between projects particularly stressful. So keep that in mind. Of course, if you don't want to deal with publishers, you can print your project yourself and sell it at conventions or online. Printing is not cheap, but if your work is good, you can get it crowdfunded, e.g. by using Kickstarter. Or you can make people preorder your project if you already have an audience and use the funds to print on-demand plus print additional copies for sale at conventions. In this case, you have to learn how to market your manga and how to advertise it online. Learn to develop a business network and learned the basics of marketing. Again, if you don't have money to invest into printing, don't want to go the policy route. Don't have a following yet and just want to have people read your manga. You can use platforms like web tunes to publish your project. I suggest research in which platform suits your project best. But if you want to go the publisher or crowdfunding root, it is best to develop a pitch deck as for crowdfunding, as a just researching successful campaigns for manga publications on Kickstarter and see how they did it. Though generally, if you have worked through the phases presented in this class, you have got all the material that you need to pitch your work to the publisher. 22. Class Project: For the class project, I want you to develop the concept for 20 page story. I want you to do the following things. One, come up with the idea for short story, to write the scenes that will happen the story and assigned pages to them based on the beginning, mid point conclusion system, three, write down the dialogues and panel descriptions. What will happen in the pages. For developed character descriptions that fit the story. 23. Conclusion: It is an essential skill to be able to create a manga, to be able to put a story into a limited amount of pages. If you can tell a story in 1816 or 20 pages, and it is possible, then you will be able to tell a story in 180, 500, or 1,000 pages. It will also teach you the skills of selecting the most essential themes and be able to compress information so that you can use the space for the scenes that really matter to the story. I really hope that this class can help bring you a step closer to fulfilling your dreams. Feel free to reach out should there be anything you don't understand or that they can help you with? If you want to learn more about a certain topic, then let me know. Good luck.